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\u201cIn 1983, I moved to Fairbanks to attend the University of\nAlaska, majoring in Wildlife Management. In 1984, at the end of the term, I\nquit school, deciding that Wildlife Management wasn\u2019t for me. I did not want to\nleave Alaska so I looked for a job. After a visit to the state employment\noffice, I was interviewed for a position as secretary at Aurora Air Service at\nFAI (Fairbanks International Airport). The owner of the small Part 135 operator\nhired me on the spot. Aurora flew scheduled routes to several Alaskan villages.\nI typed manuals and correspondence, answered the phone, greeted passengers,\nscheduled charters, sold tickets, did flight following, helped load the planes,\nand anything else that needed to be done. I even became certified as a flight\nattendant and served as flight crew on a DC-3 and a Fokker F-27 turboprop. I\nthoroughly enjoyed every bit of this adventure! I also greeted the assistant\nairport manager when he stopped by monthly to collect the rent. He was my true\ninspiration. In 1988, I left Alaska to attend Embry-Riddle in Arizona with the\ngoal of becoming an airport manager.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST MEMORY OF AVIATION?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy family moved often. When I was five, we were living in\nUtah, but my Mother\u2019s family was in the Seattle-area. I remember flying from Salt\nLake City to Seattle with my mother and sister. It must have been about 1968.\nWe dressed up in \u201cchurch\u201d clothes for the flight. The whole event had an air of\nglamour about it. Later, we often went as a family to airshows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHO INPIRED YOU THE MOST?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIn fourth grade, I had to read a biography and then create a diorama depicting the person I had read about. I read about Amelia Earhart. My Father took me to the model shop. We got a Lockheed Electra model. I put it together and hung it in a shoe box for my assignment. That experience did not inspire about aviation, per se, learning about Amelia Earhart taught me that women could do anything. At that time, it wasn\u2019t necessarily expected that I would have a career, but if I did, I would be a nurse or a teacher. Reading that book opened my thinking to a world of possibilities!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ADVICE FOR OTHER WOMEN INSIDE OUR INDUSTRY OR THINKING ABOUT AVIATION AND AEROSPACE?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cAviation has been a very rewarding career for me. I hate to\nthink that some people may not feel welcome in this field. While there are many\nmore women involved in aviation now than when I started, it is still a male\ndominated field. I would encourage girls and women to not be discouraged and to\njump in if they are at all inclined. The most common bit of advice I give is to\nbe yourself. Don\u2019t feel like you have to act like a man or like anyone else to\nwork in this field. Each individual\u2019s strength is in being themselves. Be\nyourself and do what you like!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ANY ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CAREER READERS\nSHOULD KNOW?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWhen I started at Embry Riddle, I had a goal to become an\nairport manager. And I did!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have managed airports in Oregon, Kansas, New York, and\nMassachusetts. I became the Director of the Oregon Department of Aviation after\nserving as the State Airports Manager for Oregon\u2019s 36 state-owned airports.\nUltimately, I left that position to manage an airport. After 15 years and more\nairport management experience, I took over as the Nebraska State Aeronautics\nDirector as part of the new Department of Transportation. This state DOT had\njust been formed. I thought I could help the DOT figure out how to take care of\nairports. Plus, I knew Kim Stevens, who had been the Director of Nebraska\nAeronautics Department when I worked for the State of Oregon. Nebraska had a great\nreputation of being a leader in NASAO (National Association of State Aviation\nOfficials). Recently, I got the opportunity to move back home to Washington\nState in a similar role. I jumped at it!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n__________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Amelia Earhart has served as inspiration for Ann Richart and many of us over the years, closing Ann\u2019s Focus with a quote from Amelia from over ninety years ago in The Fun of It, seems appropriate. \u201cToo often little attention is paid to individual talent. Instead, education goes on dividing people according to their sex, and putting them in little feminine or masculine pigeonholes \u201c\u2026 Girls are shielded and sometimes helped so much that they lose initiative and begin to believe the signs \u2018Girls don\u2019t\u2019 and \u2018Girls can\u2019t\u2019 which mark their paths\u201c\u2026 Consequently, it seems almost necessary to evolve different methods of instruction for them when they later take up the same subjects. For example, those courses which involve mechanical work may have to be explained somewhat differently to girls not because girls are inherently not mechanical, but because normally they have learned little about such things in the course of their education.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The times they are changing. All doers are more than welcome\nto share the joy and excitement we call aviation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Penny Rafferty Hamilton, Ph.D. Ann Richart, A.A.E., new Aviation Director for the state of Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is believed to be the first person to serve as the Director in three different states- Washington, Nebraska, and Oregon. This dynamic woman has managed a number of airports, and earned the important aviation industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-washington"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/20211001_110508-edit-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26372,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26362\/revisions\/26372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}